STATE OF OKLAHOMA v. STATE OF TEXAS

United States Supreme Court

STATE OF OKLAHOMA v. STATE OF TEXAS, (1922)

No. 20

Argued: Decided: June 5, 1922

Certain issues in this cause involving proprietary claims to the bed of Red river having been heretofore submitted on the pleadings, various petitions of intervention, and the evidence taken before and reported by a commissioner, and the court having considered those issues and announced its conclusions thereon in an opinion delivered May 1, 1922:

It is considered, ordered, and decreed as follows:

1.
That Red river is not a navigable stream in any part of its course within the state of Oklahoma.

2.
That the state of Oklahoma did not, in virtue of her admission into the Union as a state, acquire any title to, or become the owner of, the bed of the part of Red river within her borders.

3.
That the state of Oklahoma has no title, right, or interest in or to the part of the bed of Red river within her borders, save such as is incidental to her ownership of lands on the northerly bank of the river.

4.
That the intervener D. D. Brunson, who claims rights in the bed of Red river in virtue of certain oil and gas leases granted by the state of Oklahoma and her officers, did not acquire and does not hold any right whatever in such river bed under those leases, or any of them, and that the said leases have been at all times void and of no force or effect.
[259 U.S. 565, 567]
5. That the portion of the bed of Red river which formerly was within what was known and designated as Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache Pasture Reserve No. 1 (commonly called the Big Pasture), and the portion of the bed of Red river which lies south of what formerly was known and designated as such pasture reserve, has not at any time been subject to location or acquisition under the mining laws of the United States.

6.
That the several interveners hereafter named in this paragraph, who are asserting rights in the portions of the bed of Red river named in the last preceding paragraph in virtue of mining locations claimed to have been made under the mining laws of the United States, did not acquire and do not hold any right whatever in such river bed under those mining locations or any of them, and that the said mining locations have been at all times void and of no force or effect. The said interveners are as follows:

7.
That the petitions of intervention based on the oil and gas leases named in paragraph 4 hereof and the petitions of intervention based on the mining locations named in paragraph 6 hereof are hereby severally dismissed on their merits.